Henry Dickenson claimed the states had a right to secede and invited Delaware to do so, the Times reported. "The speech of Mr. Dickenson was greeted with applause and hisses," the Times noted.

Despite the applause, the hisses won the day. The lawmakers immediately passed a unanimous resolution stating that "we express our unqualified disapproval of the remedy for existing difficulties suggested by the resolutions of the Legislature of Mississippi," according to "Delaware During the Civil War," a history by Harold Hancock.

The Southern judge didn't let this rejection dishearten him too much. He wrote back to Gov. John Pettus of Mississippi that "the Governor, officers of state, and six-sevenths of the people of Delaware are cordially with Mississippi in the Southern cause." He predicted the people of Delaware would demand a convention to secede.

He was wrong. The Legislature later told Georgia that it had been the first state to ratify the Constitution and would be the last to abandon it.

Lt. Col. David L. Stricker, a Dover resident who lost his life in battle during the Civil War fighting for the Union.(Photo: DELAWARE PUBLIC ARCHIVES)

Despite Delaware's big talk about the Union, it wasn't progressive on the slavery issue. It didn't ratify the 13th Amendment banning slavery until 1901, although, of course, slaves had been freed by federal mandate long before that. It took Mississippi much longer to get a yes vote: The state didn't formally adopt the 13th Amendment until 2013, MSNBC reported.